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Why Klout doesn’t count: putting social media influence in context

Finding (or becoming) an influencer is often seen as one of the core
goals for businesses utilising social media, and the search and
measurement industry is rushing to fulfil this need.

Finding a great
exponent for your brand who has a powerful presence on your social
platform of choice and engaging them is a great way to get plenty of
bang for your social media buck.

Increasingly leading measurement tools such as Klout are being seen as a
good way to prove success in the social arena, with some companies
starting to request a minimum Klout score as a deliverable when hiring
an agency.

Unfortunately some of the systems that provide this
measurement may still be relying on the wrong metrics, providing you
with a skewed perspective on your audience and making them ripe for
exploitation by unscrupulous users.

I’d decided to try out a few different things myself and set up a dodgy ‘celebrity news’ stream as an example of how not to tweet. The stream amalgamates RSS feeds from various celebrity news sites and sponsored tweet sites and pumps them out at the rate of one every two minutes or so.

Obviously I also maintain a personal account where I tweet…well, any old rubbish really. But I do actually engage on a personal level there and usually garner a few retweets, particularly when I link to an Econsultancy article.

Given the vast difference in these two accounts it stands to reason that the ‘Real’ one should be far more influential than the ‘fake’ one. On my account I reply, retweet, link out.

In short, I engage on a one-to-one basis and try to be a half decent digital citizen, while my bot account does none of these. You can shout at it to quit spamming you all you like; it doesn’t care, mainly because I only check it about once a fortnight.

Obvious, no?

Examine the numbers however, and things get interesting:

Both accounts now have a similar number of followers (There are obviously a lot of Justin Beiber fans out there). My own account has around 1200, the bot around 1150, putting us both in the top 1% of Tweeters, if not at the superstar level.

Of course, follower counts aren’t the best metric are they? Especially not if they consist largely of teenage pop fans and desperate Z-List celebs.

Unless you’re social measurement tool Klout.

While a recent change in Klout’s algorithm has given my personal account a slightly higher rating, if I run a quick search for the bot, Klout tells me:

You actively engage in the social web, constantly trying out new ways to interact and network. You’re exploring the ecosystem and making it work for you. Your level of activity and engagement shows that you “get it”, we predict you’ll be moving up.

Which is of course, complete garbage. The bot doesn’t engage with anyone, it doesn’t network, it doesn’t ‘get’ anything.

On the surface, this is a bit of fun, it lets you know if you’re doing things right or not and drops hints to help you improve. If you are using these figures for business though, it soon becomes apparent that the metrics being used are woefully inadequate, and possibly detrimental.

The problems are compounded when you consider that some businesses are now offering users special deals based on their social media influence.

The Las Vegas’ Palms Hotel recently went as far as setting up a ‘Klout Klub’, allowing influencers access to exclusive events, free drinks and deals at the casino.

On the surface this is a good idea, it means you’ll get influential people rating and reporting on your products. Or you’ll get a bunch of gamers with several bot accounts taking all the free drinks.

You can also tie Facebook data into your Klout account for added social power, but these figures make the crucial mistake of ignoring content.

Number of followers has very little to do with actual, tangible influence. I’m not going to buy a new lawnmower based on MC Hammer’s recommendation, and my Facebook account is an entirely different entity to Twitter

Frequency might be slightly more useful but again, it means that Klout is fairly easy to exploit because it doesn’t take the content of all those tweets into account. Sentiment scores are also fairly hopeless because “nice work breaking down again train company X” tends to be assigned a positive score.

In short, you can’t afford to remove the human element from your measurements. These measurements are fine for grabbing an initial feeling for a user, but you’d be just as well served by looking at their blog’s Alexa rank. These tools do have a function,but they are simply not mature enough to accurately deliver actionable data in this way.

If you are attempting to map your user base or reward influencers, you need to be prepared to spend time and effort on it.

Tools and apps simply cannot compare with human input. When finding influencers you want to engage, by all means look at the big numbers, but only as an initial benchmarking technique. Once you’ve found some likely candidates, you can spend time examining profiles manually.

To put this in context, ask yourself: would you hire a new head of marketing based purely on the amount of recommendations they received on LinkedIn? Of course not, you’d interview them, and if you want to succeed at social you’ll need to be prepared for a lengthy vetting process.

Influencers can be useful, but only if they are contextually relevant, and it’s dangerous for businesses to rely on externally created numbers when attempting to leverage social influence.

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The market for blogging and microblogging services is quite competitive, but one of the simplest, Tumblr, has also managed to build a large and loyal following.

But keeping up with that large following as it grows is proving to be tough, and after experiencing 24 hours of downtime the other day, some are questioning whether more tumbles will take their toll on user loyalty.

New media evangelists proudly claimed that 2010 would be the ‘Year of Social Media’. The real question for me as an Online Merchandiser is
how this technology can be harnessed to turn users into buyers.

Many advertisers, agencies, and technology providers face their biggest challenge in 2011: how to innovate and keep pace with the dynamic and every changing digital landscape.

Going into 2011 advertisers and agencies will need to adapt, embrace innovation, new technologies and structure for changes in the way that display is purchased and managed. Data, inventory, demographics, audience segmentation and behavioural retargeting are all vital components in the rise of demand side platforms (DSPs).

Got points? Starting today, you can redeem them
for virtual items like cows in FarmVille or guns in Mafia Wars. In a
first-of-its kind deal, American Express has teamed with game-maker Zynga to
make its credit card rewards redeemable for virtual goods.

It’s the latest example of gamification – or the introduction of game
elements into non-game activities. There are reasons this commerce and gaming partnership works for AmEx and Zynga, but the deal could have implications for other
companies’ reward programs as well.

Over the past ten years, Econsultancy has
witnessed a lot of changes both on and offline.

From humble
beginnings we’ve grown to become a community of almost 100,000
marketers, and seen digital marketing evolve beyond recognition, the
rise of Google, Facebook and Twitter, along with the birth and
development of entirely new industries like SEO, social media and
m-commerce have changed the face of marketing over the past decade.

There’s no denying a lot’s changed, but there are a
few things that remain the same year after year.

Take for example, the relentless commercialisation of the holiday
season!

Every year we see tinsel in stores in July, Turkeys for sale in August
and New Year sales that begin before the last one has ended, and
frankly, we’re all for it! Who doesn’t need a bit of extra cash at this
time of year? We certainly do!

Black Friday and Cyber Monday both saw record figures this year, so
we’ve decided to leap on the bandwagon and introduce another
red-letter date for your diary. We want you to join us over the next week as we celebrate
ten years of the Big Red Dot – so we’re offering our members the chance
to win £10,000 on Red Friday!

December 7th 201015:57

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